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Early life and education

He was born to a Reform Jewish family in New York City, the son of Babetta (née Newgass) and German-born immigrant Mayer Lehman, one of the three brothers who cofounded the Lehman Brothersinvestment banking firm. Herbert's father arrived from Rimpar, Germany, in 1848, settling in Montgomery, Alabama, where he engaged in the cotton business, and eventually moved to New York City after the Civil War.[1]

In the campaign, he ran on the Democratic and Liberal tickets, with the American Labor Party urging their members not to vote for any candidate. In 1950, Lehman was re-elected to a full term, running on Democratic and Liberal lines and opposed by the American Labor Party.[3]

Lehman was one of two US senators who were opposed to nominating Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. (The other was Wayne Morse of Oregon.) He was also an early and vocal opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.). Lehman was one of the most liberal senators and was therefore not considered part of the Senate's "club" of insiders. He retired from the Senate after his full term and was not a candidate for renomination or re-election in 1956.[5]

The gravesite of Herbert H. Lehman

Personal life

On April 28, 1910, Lehman married Edith Louise Altschul (sister of banker Frank Altschul). The couple had three children: Hilda, Peter (1917), and John. All three served in the United States military during World War II; Peter was killed while on active duty.[2] According to a group history published April 6, 1944, the governor's son was to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The medal was set to be awarded to Peter on his father's 70th birthday.[6] Peter married Peggy Rosenbaum in 1938; they had two daughters: Penny Lehman (1940) and Wendy Lehman (1942).[7]

His daughter, Hilda Jane, eloped to Maryland and married Boris De Vadetzky, of French Russian descent, in 1940 when she was 19 years old.[8] After five years, the couple divorced.[citation needed] She remarried[9] and died at the age of 33.[10]

In his role as Governor of New York, Lehman signed a law sealing birth certificates from New York adoptees in 1935. Like many other people, Lehman was misled by Tann. It has been speculated that sealing the records was good for his own adopted children and other New York adoptees.[12][13]

Retirement

After his retirement from the Senate, Lehman remained politically active, working with Eleanor Roosevelt and Thomas K. Finletter in the late 1950s and early 1960s to support the reform Democratic movement in Manhattan that eventually defeated longtime Tammany Hall boss Carmine DeSapio.[citation needed] He founded the Lehman Children's Zoo (now the Tisch Zoo) in Central Park, which declared that "No Adult Will Be Admitted unless Accompanied by a Child."[citation needed]

Lehman was the first, and until the 2007 inauguration of Eliot Spitzer, the only Jewish governor of New York.[14] During much of his Senate career, he was the only Jewish Senator as well. Unlike most of his Jewish constituents, who had immigrated to the US from eastern Europe, Lehman's family was from Germany.

Lehman spent much of the last two years of his life at his New York City home. He celebrated his 85th birthday in March 1963 in increasingly poor health and died of heart failure on December 5, 1963, at age 85. Lehman is interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.

A ship on the Staten Island Ferry, The Governor Herbert H. Lehman, is named for him. She was retired in 2007 after forty-two years of service and has been sold for scrap.[17]

There is a Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University. Lehman's papers were donated to the Columbia University Libraries and are housed in the social sciences library – which is also named in his honor. In addition, Columbia has a Herbert Lehman Professorship of Government, whose current incumbent is Mahmood Mamdani. Columbia's sister school, Barnard College, has a building named in Lehman's honor; it houses Barnard's library and some social sciences departments. Williams College, Lehman's alma mater, named a dormitory after him in 1928.

Lehman High School (established 1974) on Westchester Square in The Bronx, New York, is named in his honor.

In 1974, Lehman was inducted into the Jewish-American Hall of Fame.[18]

A passage from one of Lehman's speeches, "It is immigrants who brought this land the skills of their hands and brains, to make of it a beacon of opportunity and hope for all men," is inscribed in his honor on the US passport, extended-pages version, on page 45.